A three-minute first look
Follow a chapter contrast back to the text, then make your own editorial decision. This short walkthrough is for authors and editors who want to see what Lixity can help them notice.
Maintained by the Lixity project · Updated
Used while writing a debut novel
Matthias Fahsold developed Lixity as an architect and developer at ROST Services GmbH. He used it while writing his own debut novel. The example below shows a review workflow with entirely invented text; it contains no passages from that manuscript.
Open the example
The report follows six short fictional chapters about a night shift at a river signal house. Description, action, dialogue and a formal incident note give you different kinds of prose to explore.
This is a read-only report generated by Lixity; its software version is shown in the report header. It accepts no uploads and saves no edits. You can explore it without installing software, starting a server or signing up.
For a real book, the Effi Briest example (German, with a complete PDF report) and the Pride and Prejudice example (English) show the same report on a public-domain novel.
Enable JavaScript for paragraph expansion, filters and the interactive chart. Paragraph text, chapter tables and links remain readable without it.
1. Notice a chapter contrast
The Start your review panel offers Open passage, Explore chapters and, when measurements are available, Open sentence rhythm. The passage link starts with the first tense flag in source order at the selected threshold, or the opening when none does. It reveals and focuses the source text; the choice is a starting point for reading, not a quality ranking.
Open the chapter map and compare the opening description with the action chapter. Look at sentence length and variation. The values describe the supplied text; a colour points to a pattern rather than rating the writing.
Choose one contrast that makes you curious. You do not need to inspect every measurement.
2. Open a paragraph and read
Select a paragraph block in the action chapter to open its text and source lines. You can also use Tab to focus a block, then press Enter or Space. Read the paragraph alongside the opening description.
Since v2.3.0: the passage appears first; expand Values (Werte in German) when you need its measurements. Chapter comparisons, reference bands, dimensions and structural diagnostics share a tabbed style area. The example uses these same paragraph and style controls.
Ask what changed: the kind of scene, what the character is doing, or how the sentences are arranged. Measurements cannot answer that question without the passage.
3. Decide what the context means
A brisk action passage and a formal incident note can serve different purposes. You might keep the contrast, mark a passage for later review, or investigate an unexpected change. The report does not save that decision.
There is no quality score to maximize. A deliberate change in voice need not be smoothed away. Short samples and language-dependent heuristics also limit what a result can support. The interpretation guide explains these limits.
Use Lixity with your own project
To analyze your own manuscript or keep research notes and decisions, install Lixity on your computer and open the local workspace. The example demonstrates manuscript analysis; it does not provide editable project or research tools.
Lixity is open source under AGPL-3.0-or-later: any writing purpose — private, research or commercial, including a book intended for sale or self-publishing — needs no extra permission. A separate written commercial license exists only for closed-source integrations. Read the licensing guide before starting.